The iconic competitive music video game series SingStar will finally be laid to rest in January 2020 as announced on the game’s official website.
SingStar, which was released in 2004, is a beloved franchise that arguably boosted PlayStation’s presence in PAL regions. At the time, SingStar competed on the PlayStation 2 with the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but soon lost its charm through the emergence of downloadable tracks compared to the compiled and curated list of tracks on the traditional game discs. SingStar did not give up without a fight though, with numerous games released for the PlayStation 3 and 4, the most recent being SingStar Celebration. These were not able to capture the magic that the original game had.
Aside from the official statement on their website, emails have also been sent out to notify customers of the impending shutdown of SingStar’s servers. The email also clarifies the changes regarding purchased content. The offline mode of the game will still be accessible after servers are shut down, but is limited to the following.
- Playing songs on physical discs
- Play digital songs that have previously been purchased and downloaded to the hard-drive
- PS4 users only will be able to re-download previously downloaded and deleted songs. Note that this is not possible for PS3 / PS2 users, where if a downloaded song is deleted, it cannot be redownloaded.
Tracking and recording high scores offline, taking store videos and snapshots, and creating song playlists will also still be accessible. All else, meaning online functionality such as purchasing new songs, interacting with any user generated content, competing online, and recording high scores online, will be unavailable.
Players who grew up in the 15 years since the original SingStar was released may want to dust off their old consoles and redownload any and all songs purchased, for the sake of one last hurrah or just a piece of nostalgia. For those interested, SingStar players may do so before the servers finally shut down on January 31, 2020, at 11:59PM GMT.
